The answer
Some believers in the past used to eat fish on Wednesdays and Fridays, and this was undoubtedly on account either a mistaken understanding of the Church's teaching on their part, or because it was a wrong habit which they had inherited or had passed down to them from others who had been mistaken.
Our kind of fasting in the Orthodox Church is eating vegan foods. As everyone knows, we abstain from meat and all foodstuff of animal origin during fasting days. Obviously fish are included as flesh foods, so to eat fish is not in accordance with our kind of fasting at all. So you mustn't be surprised at
the non-eating of fish on the fasting days of Wednesday and Friday.
In fact you should really be surprised at eating fish during a vegan fast! The general rule is not to eat fish during the fasts.
However, since there are so many fasts in the Coptic Church, around two hundred days in the year, which means more than half a year in fasting, the eating of fish during certain fasts, which are of the minor order, is permitted as a way of reducing the lengthy period of the fast for the people.
But eating fish is not allowed during major fasts or on Wednesdays and Fridays because these are counted among the major fasts.
The most important of these major fasts is the period of the forty holy days which the Lord fasted, and Pascha Week, the week of His suffering. On Wednesdays we remember how He was betrayed and plotted against, and on Fridays we recall His crucifixion.
People can eat meat all the days of the week, except Wednesdays and Fridays. So if they were to eat fish on those days, the result would be the consumption of fish foods every day of the week, since fish is included in this category! And it wouldn't be right to make things that easy.
It wouldn't be very logical either, if we were to remember Christ's betrayal and crucifixion by eating fish! We'd be letting
ourselves off rather lightly! This remembrance demands a greater degree of renunciation and devotion than that.
On another occasion some asked whether fish could he eaten on the Day of Our Lady, the festival of the Annunciation, which is one of the Lord's festivals. The Day of Our Lady is of course the 29th Baramhat (the seventh Coptic month), and always comes during the lent. So the answer to this question is that the lent takes precedence and shouldn't be broken under any circumstances, even on account of the Annunciation, because it is still part of the Lord's fast.
To break the fast on this occasion would show a lack of self-control. How could anyone fast for more than a month of the lent and then let himself be tempted by a piece of fish during the fast on the Day of Annunciation? What would that say about one's efforts towards trying to rise above the level of material things and not indulge oneself in scrumptious foods?!
[ 27 ]
Thrice-Blessed Pope Shenouda III of Blessed Memory